Galatians 4:10 You observe days, and months, and times, and years. There are two distinct grounds on which works in religion are appraised at a low or rather worthless valuation in the Bible, and either rejected or denounced accordingly. The first is when they are offered as the price of our justification in the sight of God; as an equivalent upon which the Lawgiver is challenged for the honour and the regard that are due to righteousness; then does the Bible utterly hold at nought the most laborious, and, perhaps, when looked to in another view, the most holy and estimable of all human performances. The other ground on which works are computed at a low valuation in the Bible, is where, either in themselves they are devoid of tree moral excellence, or serve not in their tendencies to refine and to strengthen the principles of our moral nature. But let a good work be delivered of both these ingredients — let there be neither an arrogated merit nor an inherent meanness in it — free of all pettiness and abject timidity — And we say of works like unto this, that, so far from the gospel lifting a voice of hostility or casting a look of discountenance towards them, the very aim of the gospel is to raise and to multiply them over the face of a new moral creation. Now, in the text there is a certain scrupulous observation referred to by the apostle, which his converts adhered to as a duty, but which he charges them with as if it were a delinquency. They observed days and months and times and years, annexing a religious importance to the stated acts and exercises of stated periods; and we have no doubt, labouring under distress of conscience, at any misgiving from the prescribed and wonted regularity. It is likely enough, that both of those ingredients which go to vilify a work, and to render it null and worthless, entered into this outward formality of the Galatians — that it gave them a feeling of security as to their meritorious acceptance with God, which nought but the Redeemer's merits ought to inspire; and that it further degraded the character of man, by reducing morality to the level of mechanism, and substituting for the obedience of a rightly strung and rightly actuated heart, an obedience like that of a galley-slave who plies at his unvaried oar, and moves in the one and unvaried circuit that is assigned to him. But there is another side to this question, which must not be left out of sight; for, though it be true that man was not made for the Sabbath, yet let it never be forgotten that the Sabbath was made for man. Man was not made to move in a precise orbit of times and seasons; yet times and seasons may be arranged, so as to subserve his use, and be the ministers of good both to his natural and moral economy. Were the keeping of the Sabbath a mere servitude of the body, which left the heart no better than before, it would be a frivolous ceremonial and ought to be exploded. But if it be true that he who sanctifies the Sabbath sanctifies his own soul, then does the Sabbath assume a spiritual importance, because an expedient of spiritual cultivation° It is not that the virtue of man consists in these things, but that these things are devices of best and surest efficacy for upholding the virtue of man. If it be true of man, that he can attain a loftier communion with his God, at those hours when the din and urgency of the world are away from him; and that a season of reading, and contemplation, and prayer acts as a restorative to the embers of his decaying sacredness; and that the voice of a minister, when prompted by the Spirit from on high, and aided by the sympathies of all who are around him, can often send the elevation of heaven into his soul; and that it is on those evenings of deep and lengthened tranquility which the footstep of intruding companion-ship does not violate, when the nurture and admonition of the Lord can descend more abundantly on the hearts of His children, and when the calm and the unction of a holy influence may be most felt in His dwelling-place — then Sabbath, which, from one end to the other of it, teems with these very opportunities, instead of ranking with the holidays of idle superstition, will be dear as piety itself to every enlightened Christian; and to it, in the most emphatic sense of the term, will he award the obeisance of a Divine and spiritual festival. And on this principle, too, may the Sabbath be rescued from that contempt which the text, in denouncing the observation of days and of times, would appear to cast on it. It is true, that it is a periodic festival, and. that. man was not made for periods. But this does not hinder that periods may be made for man. Does sacredness so keep at all times its undisturbed place and pre-eminence, amid the turmoil of those many secularities by which you are surrounded, that any one set and specific time is not needed, on which, at a distance from the besetting world, you might relume that lamp of heaven in the soul which was ready to expire? Or if the time were left to your own discretion, are such your longings after a spiritual atmosphere, that you would be ever sure to make your escape to it, when like to be lulled or overborne in an atmosphere of earthliness? It is true you may lift up your hearts to God when you please — and even amid the thickening occupations of the market and the counting-house, is it possible that many a secret aspiration may arise to Him. But how often is it that you would so please; and tell us, on your experience of the past what, if all days were alike, would be the fervour or the frequency of such aspirations? To whom much is given, of them much will be required; and on this principle your Sabbaths, these precious gifts of God to man, will have to be accounted for. And oh, forget not, that if these have been nauseated in time, heaven, if you e'er were admitted there, would be nauseated through all eternity. Sabbath is that station on the territory of human life, from which we can descry with most advantage and delight the beauties of the promised land; and it is there, as if at the gate of the upper sanctuary, where we can command one of the nearest approaches whereof our nature is capable, to the contemplations and the doings of the saints in blessedness. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. |
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